Pnoy has been stumping around at every speaking
engagement and media interaction on his recalcitrant position on the legality
and constitutionality of the little-known Disbursement Acceleration Program
(DAP) at the backdrop of pronouncements made by a score of the country’s recognized
Constitutional Law experts as Senator Mirriam Defensor Santiago, former Senator
Joker Arroyo, and Constitutional Convention member Fr. Joaquin Bernas, a member
of 1986 Constitutional Commission, which drafted the 1987 Philippine Constitution.
Even Former Chief Justice Reynato Puno shares the same view.
Pnoy has, it seems, as source of his basis for his
audacious DAP constitutionality argument the opinions of his Budget main man
and architect of DAP, Lawyer Butch Abad, Presidential Spokesperson and Deputy
Spokesperson, Lawyers Edwin Lacierda and Abigail Valte, respectively, and
presumably his Executive Secretary, Lawyer Pacquito Ochoa. I don’t want to take
anything away from the latter, but to be pitted against the former (Sen.
Santiago et al.) on issue of
constitutionality, is like a boxing match between Floyd Mayweather and Oscar
Larios (very little-known).
And it is not as if Sen. Santiago et al. simply said DAP was unconstitutional without providing bases
for the position, on the contrary, they were almost unanimous on their basis: “No
money shall be paid out of the treasury except in pursuance of an appropriation
made by law.” (Section 29, Article VI, Philippine Constitution).
The “appropriation” being referred to in the adverted
provision is the General Appropriation Act (GAA), the law containing the executive-detailed
budget to run the government on a given year. Congress deliberates on whether
to approve or reduce the budget so proposed by the president, but it cannot
increase the same. Clearly, once the GAA is passed, certified by both houses,
and approved by the president, and becomes a law, Congress’s task is done
except for its Oversight Committee, and it is the executive department that
carries out the provisions thereof.
That the president exercises discretion in the disbursement
of so-called DAP, allegedly representing savings from the budget, is paying out
money not in accord with an appropriation made by law.
Paragraph 5, Section 25 of the same article on “The
Legislative Department” of the Constitution, provides, viz:
“Section 5.
No law shall be passed authorizing any transfer of
appropriations; however, the President, the President of the Senate, the
Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court, and the heads of Constitutional Commissions may, by law, be authorized
to augment any item in the general appropriations law for their respective
offices from savings in other items of their respective appropriations.”
While this provision continues to reinforce the
argument in favor of unconstitutionality, this seems to be where Pnoy is
drawing his constitutionality argument: “xxx the President xxx may, by law, be
authorized to augment any item in the general appropriations law for their
respective offices from savings in other items of their respective
appropriations.”
However, that is a clear misreading of the provision.
The president may augment any item in the general appropriations law, it speaks
of the law or what is stated therein, which
negates discretion on disbursement.
The president may continue his stubborn stance on the
matter, but the longer he does so the more that his base support will erode.
Many of his supporters, at this point, continue to give him a pass on his
transgressions, but they have been calling on the President to make his Liberal
Party stalwart and DAP architect bow out of office out of delicadeza and spare the president the flak he had brought on him.
If delicadeza,
however, fails to dawn on Butch Abad, Pnoy must exercise his power to remove and
fire Abad. This can save his presidency, and refocus the hunt on the scammers
who are enjoying the benefits of muddled issues brought about by DAP.
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